Harlequin Boy
by ExtrinsicDemagoguery
Summary: Inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita: Sebastian Moran is an out of work veteran and author with a distressing predilection towards young boys. James Moriarty, a 13 year old boy living in an unstable and emotionally abusive home, finds his chance to manipulate an older man to serve his purposes. Moral ambiguity and a twisted tale of sex and obsession ensues
1. Chapter 1

Jim, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. His mother's voice grated upon my ears, sloppy and fat; to her he was "Jimmy," her precious boy-child, as innocent as the misnomer might suggest. He was James in scrawled ink, and Jay at the playground. But in my arms he was simply Jim.

Jim would have remained James forever, perhaps, had I not loved a certain boy in the winter of my fourteenth year. Fair but pink, with rounded cheeks swollen and chapped from frigid air and tawny hair poking out from beneath a weft-knit hat; he was mine. We were lovers not long, but passionately, as only young men with no greater woes to contrast bloody hearts can. Neither wise nor prudent, only terribly smitten, we would wander along the frozen banks of the bathing pond coddled in the center of Victoria Park. He was plump around the middle which seemed to tip his balance, and I delighted to hold his chilly hand as he bashfully stumbled over the cracked tarmac. It was only later in a heap of cold, firm skin did we find the anxious fortitude to manifest our childish whims in so adult a manner. His behind, I recall, was soft and white, planted before a warm hearth in my family's upstairs drawing room. The flesh of his sloped shoulders was peppered with drops of melted snow, trembling slightly, which I overzealously attempted to calm with my soggy, be-mittened paws. A surprised shriek was followed by desperate giggles, pretty fingertips slapping away the cold of my own. We loved boldly, that night, kissing with a frightful abandon and touching each other recklessly as we knew not yet how to love men. I attempted to fellate him, sputtering all the while, but as his orgasm filled my mouth I knew quite inexplicably how to be whole. I still remember that sweet, bitter blend, the twitching of his cock lodged between my tongue and palate, his knees squeezing helplessly at my jaw. His hand brought me to climax soon after, and we fell asleep nude on the carpet not twenty minutes later.

We awoke to a severe beating at the hand of my father, of which my William did not survive.

I cannot pretend to know the true motives behind my wicked desires. Am I innately perverse, twisted inside to yearn naturally for the ruddy, buckled knees of youth? Did something within me pass as Will did, immortalized by those weeping blue eyes bludgeoned red? The true vindications behind my bizarre nature remains a mystery, but it matters not—I am ever at the mercy of my own depraved appetite, reasoning be damned.

Now I wish to introduce the following idea: between the tender ages of nine and fourteen there are boys who, to certain men far older than they, reveal their true nature. Such a nature is not human, but nymphic (that is, demonic); and these individuals I call "nymphs." They are boys with mysterious natures; elusive, slick, insidious, clever, shifty—seemingly alike in body to their innocent peers, but antithetic in mind and spirit. He is not merely the most attractive of the lot, and is in fact often not. He possesses a glint of the eye so subtle that only a madman, a hideous soul with such terrible propensities (such as myself) would notice it. Such a boy is a deadly demon among pretty, sweet little children, and to love him is to be mistaken as a corruptor of the sinless. What a ridiculous notion.

I could not have known it at the time, but William was of the nymph kind. Were there ten or twenty years between us I would have recognized the snare concealed behind his soft laugh and his azure eyes immediately. We were equals, then, and so his fawn-like wiles were unclear to me…still manipulating me, sucking me in, but it posed no real danger with my adolescence assuming me faultless.

I digress. The years of military service following my secondary schooling proved heartless, though splendidly informative. Those were blank years, fueled by the hot rage of a frustrated young man whose trigger finger saw more action than his phallus—a crime, to be sure, especially for one with desires so difficult to sate. I was not lacking for nymphs, for every country has them in abundance, though their overall population is but a small fraction of the little children one frequently encounters. Often I would see pretty chestnut boys with willowy limbs, groins bared, watching with wide eyes at the white men passing by. You would think that I, labeled a paedophile in any respectable diagnostic lexicon, would find their young bodies arousing. I did not. It takes a nymph, you must understand, to rouse me so. In my fifth year of service I met one at last, and though his native tongue skimmed his palate like gibberish in my ears, I knew I had been captured.

He was eleven, maybe twelve, quite prim in his traditional garb. Unlike most of Korean boys I had encountered thus far, his hair was quite long, nearly to his shoulders. His oriental eyes had a pleasing slant, but were not thin. It was the first time since my fledgling years that I had such a small hand to hold in my own, heat blossoming outward from his tiny palm. By the crumbled ruins of an old shrine I sank into his body, his knobby knees pressed flush to my armpits. The boy barely give a whimper before we were caught, me in the ardent throes of impassioned lust. I was manacled, sentenced in a little white room that reeked of stale coffee, and was subsequently dishonorably discharged. It was kept, fortunately, heavily under wraps.

I found myself, quite some years later, upon the doorstep of one Mrs. Moriarty. The recent death of her husband had left her a large house and an even larger inheritance, but a lack of company that she found, apparently, quite startling. I was myself out of work, my days filled with useless scribblings that once amounted to great works of militaristic nonfiction. Great, at least, in numbers sold, though sales had waned in the growing years. I myself was nearly forty, as unwitting to enunciate the foreboding number as any man of thirty-seven would have been. Perhaps I have always had slightly vain inclinations, but never before had I invested so heartily in the careful grooming of my declining appearance. My blonde hair was carefully slicked back, forehead glossy with perspiration, broad shoulders sheathed in a well fitted (if not somewhat stifling) brown worsted wool.

I was surprised when Mrs. Moriarty opened the door instead of some priggish maid that a house so exorbitant would be sure to employ. She was a handsome woman, throat bare and unadorned by nothing more than the thick, loose black curls tumbling about her shoulders. Her eyes were slim and dark, lashed thickly, and rimmed with an excess of smudgy liner. Beneath a sharp nose were soft, plump lips, poisonously red. Short in the limbs and wee-waisted, she seemed a wicked woman, a temptress in a floral chiffon dress too light and whimsical to match her sultry affectation. I was at once ushered in with a flick of her cigarette of which she held tightly between sharp nails varnished burgandy. "Mr. Moran…" she crooned with a slight tipping of her hips, to which my body felt no reaction. I smiled politely, removing my hat as a gentleman does, and nodded briefly in salutations. I could not help but notice her eyeing my facial scars. "Please, come in!" She pressed upon my upper back with a surprising boldness, and found myself standing in a rather charming entry-way. The choice of furniture, I observed, was plain—not inexpensive, by any means, but rustic by any aristocrat's standards. The tour of the house was fairly standard…I was impressed by the height of the ceiling, the size of the rooms and the sturdiness of the furnishings therein, along with other notable flourishes of fancy, but could not see myself actually taking up residence here. She saw my hesitance and poised herself against a wall opposite, pursing her lips in a way I could only describe as Machiavellian. Offering her my most congenial smile, I held my hat awkwardly to my belly, nodding restlessly as if to some swinging tempo. "I confess this household has not had proper upkeep; however, I assure that you will find yourself most comfortable here." Though I attempted to keep my face impassive, I must have looked unconvinced, for she hastened to continue. "Please, let me show you the garden." I accepted with as much pleasure as I could muster from my voice, although I was feeling quite bedraggled by the heat and wanted no more than to take my leave and find a cool place to rest. Mrs. Moriarty—or Veronica, as I had been dutifully reminded twice already—guided me to a wide screen door that she opened with a shove. I could immediately tell why she had been so eager to show me the garden…it was voluminous with flowers matured to full bloom, inviting their powdered guts outward in a flamboyant array of colors.

However, it was not the flowers that captured my attention. Veronica gave a roll of her eyes and tossed her glossy hair back, extending two fingers in the general direction of a young boy and flicking them dismissively. "That's James...Jimmy, dear, won't you say hello?" There was a hint of malice in her voice, I presumed from multiple past attempts to lure her son into decent conversation. And oh, oh, he was _ravishing_. My hat fell from being clung to my belly to hanging limply at my thigh, and I presume that my face was likewise far too telling. The child lay upon his belly, propped up by slender elbows, his face downturned to the pages of a ratty old book. From devastatingly short brown slackettes sprouted slender, pale legs with delicate ankles which he kept positioned in the air and swung slightly to and fro. He could not have been more than thirteen, so narrow were his shoulders, and so small his frame. He looked up at the two of us momentarily, and I recognized a nymph at once. Vast, obsidian eyes burned with latent devilishness, pupils maddeningly blown out as though he had enjoyed his turn at a pipe. The boy's lips were pink and small, curving slowly into a smile that soon showed rows of tiny, pearly teeth in neat rows. My heart skittered and lurched, and I could have sworn that on that blazing July day my little Will was before me, swaddled in snow. Veronica reached out to touch a fern she had planted, twiddling a frond with obvious enthusiasm. This James—my Jim, I would later find, but for now he was James—did something that even I found most surprising, as wizened as I thought myself in regards to the tricky nymph. The boy winked, his grin decidedly malicious, before turning back to his book with the sweetest of countenances.

Veronica took me by the arm, turning me about, utterly oblivious to the thudding in my chest. "That was my James" she said, "and those were my dahlias."

"Yes," I returned, "Yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."


	2. Chapter 2

I had taken, some mornings, to laboring myself over a sink ringed with soap scum. Done up in a mint green á la mode, it was located in the secondary upstairs loo across from James's room. Contained within was a queer little port window framed by peeling white sealant. From it I had an excellent view of the neighbor's picket fenced yard, as well as a small patch of much trodden land that James had apparently claimed as his tiny kingdom. I was never a man to rush toiletries in the morning, hygiene being of especial importance to me, but nor could I recall taking quite so long to drag a safety razor down my stubbled cheek. From here I could watch the dear child amuse himself with sticks and mud, though his patience for any sort of play seemed short lived. He would hop from one mound of ground to the next, dragging the white toe of a shoe through sodden earth, perhaps to spite his mother's fastidious concentration on outward appearances. Throughout the two-week duration of my stay thus far, I had not once seen him interact with other children. Perhaps he thought himself above it, as he never seemed lonely in his solitude, and he occupied himself quite happily with all manners of solo cavorts. While slowly dabbing aftershave upon my freshly rinsed face, I watched in fascination as the creature hooked his knees over a low-hanging branch of a slightly diseased looking poplar tree. Hanging upside down, he wavered in midair, wisps of inky hair fluttering in the soft summer breeze. My hand stilled upon my face and oh, oh, how my innards boiled, how my throat constricted with monstrous lust, how my groin ached with penitent neglect. I patted my now fragrant hands dry upon a towel without bothering to wash them, stealing another hastened glance out the round glass. Be still my purulent heart, the boy's shirt had come untucked to expose a beautiful length of cream skin. The hem fell to his chin, and to my utter shock he at once bit upon a stray corner, inadvertently (I thought) pulling it all the further. His hips had all the awkward angularity of a growth spurted child, but softer somehow, sloping gently towards a petite middle. James's bellybutton seemed a mere shadow upon his belly, and upwards from that were two rosy nipples. I would have gawked for an eternity were there not a sudden rapping at the door, and in surprise I dropped my towel.  
"Mr. Moran?" came the balmy voice of Veronica. "Breakfast is on, when you're ready." I gave my thanks and assured her I would be down momentarily, simultaneously seizing the dropped towel from where it had landed upon my feet. I could tell she hesitated from behind the door, though I knew not why, and breathed my relief as she left me in peace. When I looked out the window once more James had disappeared.

Breakfast was a tense affair in the Moriarty household. I gave my best impression of a man both oblivious and preoccupied, lifting slices of rendered pork to my mouth in comfortable silence. Veronica occasionally filled the silence with the greasy corpulence of her blathering voice, punctuating her fraudulent anecdotes with dainty sucklings upon sectioned citrus fruits. James leaned his cheek upon one hand, elbow propped up improperly upon the table (which Veronica corrected once with a slap, but he shortly restored his position) and his free hand tracing letters in a puddle of maple syrup. I diligently kept my focus on Veronica's flapping lips, but dragged my eyes over James whenever I could manage to do so without rousing suspicion. The first two times he was doing nothing of interest, though I could have watched him for hours, dripping amber syrup from his dainty fingertips. As I raised my eyes to him a third time, however, his black eyes were vehemently upon me. I could not find the strength to look away, but quickly filled my mouth with a clump of scrambled eggs to prevent from sputtering. The boy dragged his index finger through the syrup before lifting it to his mouth, a blushed tongue poking out to press against the base of his digit before it was enclosed entirely by wee, supple lips. I must have startled terribly, for I tasted the metallic tang of a bitten tongue. The eggs had long gone gummy in my mouth but I continued to chew resolutely. Veronica continued to prattle on, reaching out for a ceramic pepper shaker that she then used to eclipse her hash browns in a nauseating heap of the spice. The child's face remained devoid of emotion as he pushed his finger deeper into his mouth, the last knuckle disappearing into what surely must have been a cramped space. I knew I would not last long without becoming crippled with my carnal longings; with much reluctance I excused myself from the dining table.

July was slipping into August and with it bringing new heat, so much so that snappy dressing was impractical as it was lethal. I desired much to roll my trouser legs up to my knees, but thought it indecent, daring instead to peel off my shirt in favor for a paltry A-shirt. I lounged feverishly upon a badly cushioned pinewood chair designed to prop up the legs most comfortably, fanning myself with a folded bit of newspaper. Veronica had provided me with lemonade so saccharine it hardly quenched my thirst, though I found its cooling effect most meritorious. James and his obtuse mama waltzed out to join me on the piazza, both in matching states of undress. Veronica had pinched her rounded, feminine hips into a high waisted bikini bottom, heavy breasts thrust upward by a black haltered bikini top to beget ridiculous cleavage. She looked uncomfortable in the constrictive get up, but nonetheless proud, peacocking herself before me with honeyed thighs. I knew I was meant to look impressed at her fashionable ensemble, but I was rather distracted by her child's simpler fancy. He wore only tight-fitting blue cotton briefs that did not extend much past the small, enticing bulge between his legs. Long, fine-boned thighs met ruddy, scuffed knees, which gave way to calves that I could have encircled easily with one hand.

He lay upon the grass as Veronica lingered beside me to talk of a neoteric work on the bastings of hams, or some other such feminine nonsense, and I nodded periodically to suggest that her dull gab had my full attention. James held his book before him, the same one that I had encountered him reading the first time I saw him—in fact, he looked unmistakably similar, his dear sweet ankles twitching under the stippled light from a nearby maple tree. The taught skin across his spine, so serpentine in its sinuous curve, was mottled with a kaleidoscopic array of colors from Veronica's heat-wilted dahlias. I watched, and watched, the ache in my groin threatening to make itself known. Bashfully, but with as much innocent contingency as I could muster, I covered my lap with the newspaper and folded my hands upon it. Veronica settled herself upon the ground with a bottle of sun-tan lotion, oiling her legs lasciviously as she remarked on politics; keeping her opinion guarded, of course, as one does in conversation. I found her dreadfully pathetic. Rocking my hips gently forward, I gave the child my intermittent study, allowing the stolen ecstasy to pool in my loins. I was firm in my trousers, now, and leaking persistently. In an unwise moment of eager impulse, I pressed my palm hard upon the erection shielded by the flimsy paper and rolled my hips into the touch. To my luck Veronica was deeply focused on slathering her toes with oil to bake in the sun, and James was apparently absorbed in his reading. Barely able to contain desperate whimpers, I watched the boy slide his smooth legs together, occasionally stretching a pale arm out to fiddle with a blade of grass. Still trembling with desire as my wayward hand continuing its perilous ministrations, James looked up quite suddenly, a hideous smirk twisting an unrepentant mouth. Those aphotic eyes narrowed loosely as though caught in the throes of lust, lips falling open to cry out silently, his body jerking forward in an impish charade of orgasm. Such a wicked pantomime burned within me, and I knew at once that this nymph was of the most terrifying breed—but it was too late. I lifted my hand away from the solidness below in an attempt to stave the impending climax, but he only continued to mock me, slender shoulders rolling back in feigned abandon. My body was paralyzed with pleasure, hot and sudden, spurting my pleasure beneath the shield of grey newsprint. Veronica turned to me with a bimbo's plastic smile, and for once I relished her asininity; she had not a clue that I had just ejaculated beside her. I was deliciously warm, more from my satisfaction than the blistering summer heat, but I could not enjoy my rapture for long.

The little nymph was not simply demonic, he was a succubus. And he had selected _me_.


	3. Chapter 3

I grew bloated with vexed frustration in the following days; with it my head began to pulse with a confounding rhythm and my heart in diametric opposition. I was a man torn between the stale reservations instilled within me and my own potent desires, utterly defenseless from the strange and perverse contrivances of that pretty, wicked little beast. Veronica had presently occupied herself with concocting all manners of cloying, mildly repulsive concoctions to entice me, with her most recent enterprise being offered to me in a tall, frosted glass. Upon tasting I was able to pull some of the more aggravating flavours: that of mint, eucalyptus, and grenadine. I found it easiest to just humour the floozy, though it was most trying. It was out of foresighted paranoia that I so graciously accepted her pursuits. It seemed perhaps, at that moment, that if only I could remain accommodating (with that gentlemanly affectation that easy women found ineffably attractive) I could keep her trifling mind away from my somewhat obvious nepotism for her son.

A thankfully unspoken agreement had been forged between myself and the nymph ever since my attraction had been inadvertently expressed. I was to entertain his mother with conversation and the occasional outing (which I hoped desperately was not mistaken as courting, though it was clear that the entire neighborhood had already decided it was) in order to keep her from constantly berating her son. In return my true, inappropriate lusts remained unhindered and unreported. At first it seemed futile, for as much as I attempted to engage the woman in her banal gab she paused frequently to adjust James's posture with a smack against his back, or his tone with a hissed "oh _do _stop sniveling, it's hideous." It was not long before Veronica's querulous behavior improved, which I found intolerably obnoxious as soon as she began to flounce about in her frocks like a vainglorious bird. Only twice did I overhear any troubling exchanges; once long past bedtime and the other after a dispute over a broken lamp. It was strange, though, and bothers me still—she stomped into his room at a quarter past twelve and whispered malice, most of which I could just barely make out through the wall, while James remained perfectly silent. I could not even be sure he was awake for the affair. Among her diatribe I picked out 'worthless' and 'ungrateful,' which I found oddly unsettling. Far be it for I to question the parenting skills of any mother, for I am hardly qualified in the area, but it seemed fruitless to insult a young boy so clearly misbehaving out of spite.

Veronica was of the insufferably social sort, in a near constant and regrettably immutable state of dinner planning. Twice weekly the leaves of the dining table would be folded outward to seat a half dozen of her gabbing consorts; I found myself overwhelmed by womenfolk. I longed desperately for the company of other men despite the fact that I have never been one for fraternization. With so many dinners on the agenda I discovered that James did not share his mother's fondness of off-white glassware, which he demonstrated by knocking the dishes set at his place—piled high with his mother's rich cooking, mind you—onto the floor. Only the plate shattered, which seemed to perplex him, but I found it inexplicably satisfying. The woman shook her curls indignantly, but in her effort to appear a gracious hostess and doting mother, she merely tugged her fingers lightly through James's hair and tutted about the mess. I never found Veronica to share much in common with her offspringed boy, but through her animosity towards the child I saw flickers of that unscrupulous spirit that had me so possessed. Those thick, crimson-glossed lips would roll back like two inflamed rolliches to reveal an artificial smile that I was by now familiar with, and in it I could see her James. Perhaps she had once been herself a slippery nympthet, but over time had lost her charm to boiled foods and quaint dinner parties. A regrettable sight, but I am confident it is common, as I have never met a nymph—or nymphet, though I have never taken the slightest interest in one—over the age of sixteen. Perhaps the onset of adulthood bears some terrible cipher to corrupt the tender flesh and spooky eyes; though I couldn't name it, and it is hard to say what precisely does the trick. Velvet skin becomes briny with stinking acne, red and swollen, and softly snubbed noses become greasy and craggy. Hair that fell in soft tufts crust towards the scalp and must be washed with alarming frequency…it is a sore shame in ordinary, pretty children, but a criminal malfeasance in the darling nymph.

It was after one such soiree that I, burdened with a belly full of fried chicken livers, found myself invited to join Veronica and her friends (though they hardly seemed to know each other past differing tastes in interior decorating) around her backyard fire-pit. I had seen James collect charred bits of sticks from it before, but it had appeared otherwise long unused. A sliver of the sun still glowed over the horizon, smearing the piazza with a dull orange luster while the garden and lawn was already eclipsed in darkness. The ladies had taken threadbare blankets to perch on, and some roosted upon cushions, each taking careful precaution to fold their legs tightly in my male presence. They could have sat with their legs spread wide, knickers bared, and I still would not have eyes for them. Certainly not while James slowly circled the fire, a smoking branch in hand, fanning it lazily in the night air to watch the smoke curl as the women chatted about some neighborhood rabid dog. Apparently that constituted news among the insipid. The long-limbed faun wore jersey trousers that he'd cut off just above the knees and a striped shirt that was two glorious sizes smaller than he was surely meant to wear. He had a curious way of walking, which I had dutifully studied; his feet he dragged slightly behind him, knees buckled in a charmingly infantile fashion, hips protruding perversely forward as he shambled along. When spooked or pranking he scampered much like a spider, hurtling forward with a bizarre, sideways gait that miraculously did not alter his course. This evening he was stop-and-go, fixated on the flames like a moth to a lamp, and only when it had died to embers did he grow bored of the fire and his smoldering branch. With a dainty flick of his precious wrist he threw it into the pit and lept over it to the other side, much to the annoyance of his mother. One of the less obtrusive women surprised me with an uncharacteristically prying question regarding my facial scars, though I was not offended by it. Despite my disdain for inane chat I have practically perfected the craft of story-telling, and with much gesticulation and vocal animation find it remarkably easy to entrance a crowd. Halfway through my story (the wartime telling of how I survived a guerrilla attack by two men with knives) I felt a startling tickle at the nape of my neck: cold little fingers swept across the fine hairs, inducing a discordant shiver that my spine swallowed downward. Veronica prepared to scold him, but decorum prevented her from interrupting my story. For that reason I slowed the pace of the anecdote, pausing for effect, and meanwhile savouring the rapturous tickle of the boy's unkempt nails. I lifted a hand to illustrate the path one fateful blade took, and little James ducked beneath it, gathering up a fold in my trousers with his monkeyish toes as he crawled into my lap. Oh, how my heart did pitch within my chest, how my loins ached as his comfortable weight settled upon them. In an effort to appear nonchalant I pressed a fatherly hand against his back, continuing my tale without a hitch. Veronica pursed her lips but protested not, allowing me a stolen moment to delight in her son's small body. His cuspate chin dug into the yielding flesh where my forearm and bicep met, thumb effectively bisecting my wrist as if to test my pulse. Once or twice I flicked my gaze down upon him and was rewarded by a sight so magnificent it provoked meaningful but insoluble clarity within me. That devilish face I had come to crave and fear in tantamount had softened considerably; a roseate glow from the waning embers warmed his soft, white face, and against it his black lashes kissed it sweetly goodnight. How the beastly child that so easily mocked me could appear abruptly vulnerable, as though he truly were a boy of thirteen, was quite beyond me.

My spirits fell when Veronica at last insisted that James should retire to bed, and bit my tongue to prevent suggesting that I escort himsuch. Such a proposition could easily be misconstrued—though any suspicions on the mother's part would have been fairly ratiocinated. Up until this point the cow had proven to be worthlessly vapid, however, and I had little reason for honest worry. I lowered my head for a last inspection of the tired boy and was shocked to behold such a changed expression; from his eyes opalescent teardrops wobbled at the creases of his slitted eyes, blown pupils shimmering black in reflection. His wee hand clung loosely to my shirt, pinkie clicking absently at a button, and it inspired such tenderness inside me that I felt inclined to steady myself. Virulent tears trickled down his cheeks as his mother's shadow drew nearer, and I was astonished to say the least, quite shaken by such an unexpected display of emotion. Unprepared to have the boy plucked off of me; my innards squirmed with vertiginous malaise as he was swiftly removed from my person. I hoped desperately that my knees moved quickly enough to conceal my erection, which they perhaps did not, but my reflexes in conjunction with Veronica's utter fatuousness had once again commanded my feigned innocence.

"I do apologize for his juvenile behavior, ." Veronica's voice snapped like a rubber band against unwitting meat, and I could only nod amiably, left now to amuse the remaining women as she made off to put James to bed. Without my beloved distraction I was ill at ease, but carried on, dragging dehydrated fingertips down my scars as I spoke of them. They looked impressed, with one somewhat frightened, and all clasped their hands to their bosoms in ladylike consternation. I was not forced to endure their conventions for much longer, for not long after Veronica returned she prompted a nightcap in the drawing room. I gave my concessions and retired to bed, feeling vaguely put out by the entire episode. Parties still did not suit me, and no amount of piquant poultry and robust wines could change my preferences. Veronica supplied her dissatisfaction at my departure, but it was not enough to sway me, not tonight.

Bed offered little comfort. The queer expression James had sported haunted my mind's eye—it was not the tears I found most troubling, but the lack of accompanying noise. James took every opportunity to scorn his mother with loud tantrums or periods of stony, mute conniption; never had I seen him cry silently. Time grew distorted as I willed sleep to come, but it proved an elusive bastard. I measured the time in rough increments, guided by the familiar noises that preceded sleep. Two clicks from downstairs: the porch light turned off, followed by the bakelite chandelier suspended in the dining room. Veronica brushing her teeth, the sound of a faucet, and then relative silence. I had very nearly drifted to a comfortable stasis when a shuffling sound came from the carpeted corridor; it started and stopped, started and stopped, not unlike a certain nymph marching 'round the fire pit. Of course I recognized James's footsteps at once, but grew uncertain as they passed the bathroom. Apprehensive, I moved to a sitting position, poising in the darkness for more conclusive sounds.

Not a moment later James was standing in my doorway, one spindly arm wound tightly around a much abused teddy bear. Even in the scant light of the dim hallway I could make out a lost eye and patchy fur where liberties had been taken with a pair of shears. We stared at one another silently for a long and disquieting period before the door was shut behind him, my eyes adjusting to the small boy illuminated only by blue moonlight. He cast a wicked look, plump lips purpled and parted, but still there was something lacking in his usual affectation. Children plagued by the onset of puberty generally express their moods with reckless abandon, but his angst was calmly rendered, almost reverently contained. The mattress dipped beneath his meager weight and I rolled back the sheets to accommodate him, unsure of his motives but willing to reciprocate them nonetheless.

That shiny shock of ebony hair nudged gently into my side as he curled up beside me, dainty feet trapping one of my ankles. His skin felt oddly cool on such a sweltering night. Something within me feels cheated even still; I experienced no terror in that moment, no proud gratification of my brazen indomitability, no heady rush of adrenaline. Instead I was lulled into a near meditative state by James's breath steady against my thigh and the peculiar added sensation of knotted fake fur.

"What's the fellow's name?" I whispered into the room, half not expecting an answer. He was strangely attached to toys for a boy of his age.

"None of your fucking business." James replied snarkily, but I could feel him grinning into my leg. He had a delicious habit of repeating every curse word he could possibly absorb, mostly to further horrify his mother. I chuckled, sliding my fingers into his hair, and waited.

"It's David." He supplemented after a short while, tucking his knees up to cross mine. "After my da."

I only nodded in response, taking the opportunity to slide my arm around his narrow shoulders. He leaned into my touch, and then lurched forward, nearly crushing my ribs as he elbowed his way onto my belly. Heaving, I dared only to stare at him, my hands hovering in the air as though I aimed to catch a fish. The nymph dropped his teddy onto my chest, leaning over until the tip of his nose brushed mine. There seemed a recondite, buzzy magnetism reflecting off him to prickle my flesh, something utterly uncontrollable. As soon as his lips found my scruffy chin I was utterly paralyzed, more with dismayed arousal than shock. Two pecks were placed against my upper lip before both were captured by satin embouchement, a little tongue slipping unscrupulously past my chapped lips. Desperately my arms looped around a fragile waist, pulling the child closer. Hovering in my mind remained the boy's face, chaste and downed like a fresh-picked peach coddled in my lap as he cried. Why he cried, I did not know, nor could I tell now why he was kissing me. His thighs gripped at either side of me, unrelenting, but I could not find it in me to question his intent. I could smell the youth on him: his skin was imbued with sweet summer grass and thirsty earth, hair fragrant with the faint perfume of his mother's shampoo.

"Daddy…" he whimpered against my mouth, causing me to freeze entirely. I felt first horror, than arousal, all of which was wrought with confusion. The implication was as disturbing as it was alluring, and I knew not what to make of it.

"Jim…." I croaked back to him, clutching his white pyjamas with both fists. "…My Jim."

He grinned at me, and in his eyes I saw no light.


	4. Chapter 4

My little James strangled me that night. Not with truth to the letter, though my throat did once or twice run dry, but in a more poetic vice grip he held me until blessed sleep took us both. His beloved and most fatigued teddy sat repose upon my knee—where he had dropped it prior; I took this as a sign of trust, for I had never witnessed the timeworn bear free from Jim's claws. He had watched me awhile, pressing a free thumb against blue bathed pulsepoints across my throat. I admit I didn't dare to blink, not until my eyes burned ferociously. I was caught in a retrospectively romantic fancy, admiring the nymph's steady scrutiny. Twice he kissed me, and once I kissed him, but as I tried to pull in for a fourth embrace he smacked my chest with the heel of his palm and sat decidedly upright. The devil, the imp, the hideous little beast; he slid forward, buttocks planted firmly against the front of my pyjamas. Within me grew the most peculiar impetus to strike him…nay, to flay him, to slit his skin from belly to throat and watch as swollen meat and viscera throb and fall to decorate the bed with his abomination. He'd deserve it, the hateful brat, but of course I only blinked at him, helpless as I was.

Around an hour he sat upon me, twig-like arms propped upon my newly raised knees. Occasionally I felt the smooth arch of his lapin foot slide down my hip or across my belly, and just once (as I began to doze) it blurred in the air to tilt my chin upward afresh. I meant to ask him what business he meant by referring to me as his "Daddy"—I knew little of the boy's late father, save for his name and the vast wealth he had consigned to his family—but the silence that had fallen between us seemed pudgy and cloying, certainly far too fat and lazy to be budged. Despite myself I began to nod off.

Jim seemed fond of the man, despite speaking little of him, if his affectionately named toys (be it I or his teddy) who had acquired honorific pseudonyms was any measure. I lay with one rough hand adoring at his greasy hair, my fingertips becoming smudged by the pomade he had surely smuggled from my drawer earlier that day. It was impossible not to touch him in some manner or another, even if he had been impetuous to break our most ardent embrace. Lazily he swept one lovely, earth-blackened toe across my chest until it prodded at my adam's apple. I swallowed to make it wiggle, and he laughed, and oh, oh…how his body quivered, only slightly, chiming from his throat like a bell of crumbling ore—that recherché façade he no doubt learned from his mother clinging to every gasping giggle. I held him ferociously tight in that moment, reached out to feel him, to feel the bouncing of his wan chest struggle against my own. He allowed me to hold him for a moment, but not long enough, and soon he had wriggled his way out of my grip and lept off the bed in a versed impression of a bullfrog (complete with sound effects). It occurred to me that my William had once curled his chubby palms around his lips to imitate a dove…oh, how I'd teased him for it.

Jim tiptoed to the window, grasping two massive handfuls of the gauzy curtain and pulling himself en pointe. He paused there for a great while, bare calves straining as he cooled his face against the window, causing himself pain for pain's sake. Children often do. A dozen convictions fluttered and faded in my mind before I could mouth the words to speak them, but Jim did not make any effort to fill the silence. I took to counting the seconds at odd intervals—rather defeating the purpose—until the nymph had declared his fill of lunar devilry by spinning around to face me. Thin arms rose to release the fabric and dropped to his sides. Such small wrists, pretty wrists, thin-skinned and nearly translucent, that Irish blood apparent under meager Irish skin. The damning child bent at the waist, shaking off his white nightshirt, and there—there. There he was. Anything I knew of James was rendered null, nay, fallacious at best; here my Jim stood. My Jim. Long limbed and lean, yet impishly short, as though a slender boy of sixteen had somehow been abridged. All 4'10" of him was bared before me, pale, sophistical. Hideous. I recalled that pretty, poignant fantasy of my boy soused in blood and decorated with his innards, as if with his shirt he had additionally shed his skin. I am unaware of what my reaction may have been…likely I stammered like a fool, as mild mannered a man that I am, and watched with profound fascination. From narrow shoulders burgeoned his arms, which framed perfectly a gaunt, longish torso. My Jim had giraffe's legs sheathed in lovely, buttery flesh. I envied him his power…no man or woman had legs like those, it was impossible for such pretty things to support the full weight of an adult. Nymphs are blessed, you see, and made to consume, made to please, made to suck their selfish pleasure from unwitting victims. I tell you, I was caught in his spider's web. I was trapped. Lastly I settled my gaze between his legs—at the very last indeed, as though to savour the crowning, half-bitten poached fruit. He was small there, and nearly hairless still, with only a regrettable patch of dark fuzz blooming by the base of his penis. Certainly he would have looked much better without the lamentable coarseness that one at pubescence, but I hardly thought of it at the time. I was much too awestruck, and certainly far too aroused to critique my tiny lover's budding body.

The nymph tilted his chin upward by a sliver, eyeing me through slitted lids. Albeit transiently, I was reminded of Renoir's provocative rendering of a flirtatious nymph (a portrait I oft admired), until he distracted me with stuttered movement. He slid his toes hard through the carpet as he shuffled forward, dropping all pretense of ostensible sophistication to instead find an interesting play-thing. Though I lay very still, my hand crept towards my groin, as slowly as I could manage so as not to bring untoward attention to myself. Meanwhile the boy scratched idly at the back of one calf with a calloused heel, staring aimlessly at my wardrobe. My view was that of his round buttocks and thighs, girdled slightly by a veil of shadow but no less maddeningly exquisite. As my hand gripped my erection he swirled around as if on cue, gleaming his teeth at me. The morose organ twitched beneath the sheets, and I clenched tighter around it to discipline it. I was rewarded with a tiny jolt of pleasure. Fearing that Jim would take the opportunity to mock me once more, I refrained from proper masturbation. He studied me a moment, arms crossed, before turning away with a pitilessly blasé expression. I followed suit by pleasuring myself in earnest while watching his tiny form pace my room.

The boy tucked his little fingers inside the pockets of my favorite overcoat, knee sliding against the chair it rest upon as he searched. Unable to find whatever it was he was looking for, he toppled the poor piece of furniture over—and very nearly gave me a heart attack in the process. I imagined his woken mother walking in on him like this, nude and profligate, with poor Moran sticky with sweat beneath the sheets. Feigning sleep seemed the only option, but I was too terrified to move. To my tremendous luck the house did not stir, and within moments Jim was ransacking my desk. Watching my papers reduced to crumpled rubbish on the floor seemed a small price to pay for a naked nymph at my disposal, so I remained silent, rubbing myself as he dug his forearm into an open drawer. The brat pulled out a pack of cigarettes and gleefully pressed one to his lips, not seeming to care that it remained unlit. It was all I could do to restrain my laughter as he swaggered over to me, self-impressed and strikingly cavalier. The dearest child must have imagined himself as some audacious gangster, I can only presume, dusted with the fallout of a fired gun.

Those lips suckled red (from habitual mouthing at chapped patches) rolled the cigarette around from corner to corner, pulling the filter further behind his teeth. Two little hands pressed against the mattress, and he lept up, squeezing his knees together as he scooted up towards me. All the while I continued a gentle rhythm, innocently, innocently. I meant him no harm. "Got a light?" he whispered, dipping his head low to my throat. I couldn't speak. To madden me further he rested his hand upon the restless movement of my own, sliding along with it, watching me. Not once did he break eye contact, and nor did I, though I'd have liked to; his own were so dark, so empty, so….

_Dead_.

In a moment of coerced bravery I slipped my hand away. His remained. I gasped at that, slack-jawed and befuddled—I must have looked the fool, and played it well, dumbstruck by the feel of a child's touch. Lips bruised by umbra pursed and snapped as he fisted the sheet around my member, it acting as a second foreskin to my wanton delight. Orgasm fast approached, asphyxiating me with near violent contractions. I was choking, throttled, strangled: throat stoppered tight, body clenched and screaming for release. It came, it came, just as those lips paled by laughter touched upon what bulged beneath the cotton sheets.

He lifted his face, cigarette soggy with my seed. I wrinkled my nose.

"Never mind." he chuckled, and flicked the wasted fag at my face.


End file.
